Wednesday, December 05, 2012

HAMPDEN COMMUNITY CENTRE MURAL R.I.P.

I finished it in February 1984 and the year I spent working on it daily was one of the happiest experiences of my life. I tried to express enjoyment and community in the composition, incorporating about sixty portraits of regulars at the centre - pensioners, mothers and children, teenagers, kitchen staff, organisers - all assembled within a 'geometrified' version of the interior and the neighbourhood. 

The centre offered cheap meals for pensioners and every day at lunchtime they poured in. I would chat with them while I painted and sometimes there would be sing-songs, all the old favourites they knew by heart. One of the regulars was a skilled accordéoniste and I'd sing my Piaf repertoire - they always wanted La Vie en Rose! I've got a tape of one of these rambunctious sessions which makes me very nostalgic. 

I painted myself into the picture and on a poster-like rectangle, I asked my models to sign their names. In the middle of the wall I painted my work table with brushes and tubes of acrylic paint laid out on it. � 

(click on pictures for larger views)




























A couple of months before I completed it, the mural was inaugurated by Ron Heffernan, Mayor of Camden at the time. The occasion was covered by the local press and one tabloid (Daily Telegraph, January 30, 1984) but not a single critic or other art establishment person was, as far as I know, ever aware of the existence of this particular oeuvre. Which is perhaps just as well since its visible life was cruelly extinguished after only ten years.

Perhaps its DNA still lingers beneath the layers of industrial paint with which the wall was covered in 1994. I only found out about its obliteration long after the event when a friend told me he'd been to the centre and was astonished that my mural had disappeared. The new managers at the Community Centre never contacted me about their decision and when I went there to protest, the explanation they gave was that the mural was no longer relevant because most of the pensioners I portrayed had died. My jaw dropped to the floor but I refrained from saying that a great deal of art would be banished from museums if this reasoning was enforced. I looked into the legalities but apparently, since I had been employed to paint it, I was technically not the owner of this work. A law concerning the defacing of artworks did come into being later but too late to apply in this case. The only concession the managers would make was to put up in the entrance hall a small framed photo of the mural before its cover-up.

Fortunately I have slides of the entire wall, with close-ups. But that was the end of my mural aspirations. �

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17 comments:

marja-leena said...

What a marvelous, amazing project, Natalie! Such a large part of your efforts went into that, as well the portrayal of those people in the community that you got to know. It truly is a crime that it was destroyed! I'm so glad you have the photos and shared this story.

Hattie said...

Amazing. I wonder if this would happen today. I'll bet there would be some protest organized to save the mural. Such a wonderful piece of work to disappear like that. What a shame.

Dick said...

Stupendous! How sad that that was the end of your mural aspirations, Natalie. I could see you now as a latter-day Michelangelo, directing a team of fit youths in the execution of further grand visions...

Clive Hicks-Jenkins said...

The 'R.I.P.' in the title was the giveaway, so I read this with my spirits at first sinking, but then plummeting. The mural delightfully captured a still point in the life that presumably still goes on within the walls of the community centre, and it's hard to imagine anyone standing in front of it and then deciding that it was of insufficient merit or of enough historic interest to be left in place for others to enjoy and learn from. As for the excuses the new management proffered, they're clearly nonsense. Those responsible delivered their verdict and pushed ahead with the execution, clearly having either met with no opposition, or having steamrollered it. Their actions sicken me. Wiping out social histories is an act of cultural vandalism of the type you don't expect to find in a civilised country. Shame on the people who did this. Shame, shame, shame!

I'm so sorry for your loss... for everyone's loss!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Hattie, yes! If only I was told in advance of the Centre's decision to remove the mural, I'd have tried to organise some kind of protest. But I only knew of it a long time after the crime was committed. Well, its life was short but at least it was a happy one.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Clive, sorry for the delay in my reply, The comments system here is responsible! But I'm getting rid of moderation as it's just too much hassle. Anyway, thanks for your support. I've long since given up feeling sad about the loss of this mural. I'm quite proud of the work I did there, I think it was valid artistically and in the context of its purpose and environment. I think that artistic merit did not enter at all into the minds of those who wiped out the mural - it was political correctness of the kind which can sometimes seems dangerously close to fascism.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Dick...moi, directing a team of fit youths? Ha ha ha ha...it would certainly be fun but nobody's gonna take the brush from my hand! Either I do it all myself or it doesn't get done at all.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Marja-Leena, I'm thankful to have had that wonderful experience. I think I would probably do it again, but only if I knew it was not going to vanish into the ether afterwards. On the other hand, everything is ephemeral, isn't it?

Meanwhile I'm going to get all the slides digitised so at least they will be a proof that the mural existed!

Christy said...

Dearest Natalie,what a FANTASTIC attitude by the Powers-that-Be about wiping out your mural!!!!!! IF this was applied across the board virtually every work of art in every museum involving people of say 100 years ago would have to be painted over....................
Stupidity has now really reached epic proportions!! Love and hugs!

Beth said...

The destruction of art always makes me livid, but especially in this case, Natalie! I love both of these murals, with their sensitive portrayals of real people and real life, and your beautiful execution of the work itself. I know of several examples in the U.S. where the same thing happened to murals painted in the 30s and 40s by a friend and teacher of mine. It's inconceivable to me. That whole Mexican mural tradition is fascinating. Did you ever see the Orozco murals in Hanover, NH when you were living in Putney? They are quite astounding, and a dark socio-political comment on the times, too. Even though they are in a dim basement, I think they'll always be preserved. Your attitude is great after what must have been a real blow and shock - I suppose, as with most art, we make it, we learn,and we move on and let it go. Still, public art should remain.

Beth said...

p.s. Also loved seeing the photos of YOU!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Christy! great to see you commenting here for the first time - thank you!
I don't remember whether you ever saw those murals when they were still in existence? Well, it's all spilt milk now (or spilt paint!) and I'm not crying about it. But it was certainly a crying shame, way back then.

Beth, ah here you are, welcome back!
No I never saw the Orozcos in Hanover but I did see his work and the other Mexican muralists when I was in Mexico.
They were amazing but not really my cup of Tequila. The murals I love are ones by Giotto and other early Italians and also further back in time: Byyzantine, Etruscan, Assyrian, Egyptian etc.
The destruction of my work at Hampden was, I think, simply due to ignorance and political correctness overload. Not only were many of my subjects inconveniently dead, but I was also guilty of not featuring sufficient 'cultural diversity'. Well, that's how it was when I painted it. If the Centre's managers had asked me before destroying the mural , I would have cheerfully added some cultural diversity!

Jean said...

It's wonderful to see your murals, Natalie, so glad you decided to blog about them.

Your passion for mural painting and study of the Mexican muralists and of their predecessors going far back is gloriously evident and makes these so much more resonant and beautiful than a lot of 'realistic' work commissioned for such settings.

The thought of something you worked on for a whole year being obliterated like that is almost too painful to imagine, and terribly sad for the centre's users and for all of us.

On the other hand, as you say, everything is ephemeral. And also ten years of being seen every day by the people featured and by their friends and no doubt in some cases by friends who remembered those no longer there in the flesh is a huge and wonderfully life-affirming thing.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Thanks Jean, I'm glad you saw the connection I felt with muralists of the long-gone past rather with those 'social-realist' moderns which I'm not interested in at all. Although I wish this wall still existed, perhaps with time I might have seen it differently and wanted to alter it in some way. So maybe I just have to keep being grateful for that wonderful period of time when my mural ambitions were realised.

Anne said...

There are so many reasons why it was a terrible act to destroy the mural, starting with the fact that it was a beautiful thing. So much loving human labor is extinguished by people who just want to get on with the new. But besides that, it lost those images of people, now dead, whose spirits lived on in your work. Painting over that mural was a destruction of history and dishonored the dead. I hope those who did it will be haunted by the ghosts of all those departed friends whose portraits were in your painting.

Vivien said...

What an awful shame the mural was painted over. People in councils can be horribly philistine. Here in north Oxford there's a lovely area of natural land, near Port Meadow, like the countryside before enclosures. Someone suggested turning it into a floodlit football pitch!! I thought they were joking at first, but no. Thankfully I think They are leaving it as it is. Your mural was a tremendous achievement - such liveliness, and complexity! Thank goodness we have photos to let it live on.

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Many thanks Anne; maybe ghost haunt that plcae at night! However, not all the people I painted on that wall are dead - the old certainly occupied the most space but there were also teenagers and children and various people who worked at the centre so I guess they are still around. It would be interesting to know what they thought, if anything, about their liknesses being wiped out!

Vivien, I agree that many councils can be blind. It seems a shame that their understanding art and nature and culture is so shallow. Thank you for your appreciation.